Still More Tourists
In 2012 Krakow received nearly nine million
visitors, of which 6.5 million arrived from other
parts of Poland and the rest from abroad. It’s
340,000 more visits than in 2011. The largest
contingent of foreign tourists came from the United
Kingdom, namely 26 percent of the total number.
Second place went to Germans who made up 13 percent
of last year’s foreign travelers in Krakow, followed
by Italians, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. An average
visitor from abroad spent some 140 euro in Krakow.
In 2012 all guests, foreign and Polish, left the
total of about euro 833 million in the city, an
increase of 17 percent on the previous year.

Polish National
Pantheon in Krakow.

The newburial
place of the greatest Poles has been opened in the
crypts under Krakow’s SS Peter and Paul church at 54
Grodzka street, roughly halfway between the city’s
central square and the Royal Castle. It complements
two older mausoleums in Krakow, in the crypts of the
Wawel Cathedral and at the Skalka sanctuary, both
already filled to capacity. For now The National
Pantheon consists of just three small rooms but an
800-sq-meter duplex extension is to be built beneath
the churchyard. No rush, actually, as all candidates
for a burial at the place take their time.

Old Town’s Piazza
Tops the List of the World’s Marvels
Krakow’s
Rynek Glowny central square has been
voted the most beautiful place on earth by readers
of the Polish edition of the National Geographic
magazine. And according to them, the world’s second
most attractive site is
Wieliczka Salt Mine near Krakow while the
city’s
Kazimierz town district comes fourth. The
highest-ranking foreign sight is Norway’s Geiranger
Fjord at the fifth place, and Peru’s Machu Picchu
has been chosen our planet’s
must-see
wonder number seven.

8th Top City
Krakow is one of Top 10 Cities in Europe according
to the American readers of Conde Nast Traveler, the
US magazine. Namely, Krakow has been voted the
continent’s 8th most attractive city in the 2012
Readers' Choice Awards. It has been praised chiefly
for its culture and sites as well as ambience. The
seven higher-ranked cities are Florence, Barcelona,
Rome, Vienna, Venice, and Budapest.

It’s Official: Krakow
Even Safer Now.

Krakow police chief has
painted a fairly rosy picture of the public safety
in the town. Speaking at a much publicized special
session of the city council, superintendent Mariusz
Dabek pointed to statistics which reflect a decline
in the overall number of criminal offences from
52,000 in 2004 to 33,000 in 2012. There were 24
cases of homicide in 2004, nineteen in 2012, and
seven in the first three quarters of 2013. The
police recorded 210 assaults last year compared to
343 in 2004. At the same time car theft dropped
spectacularly from 3,335 in 2002 to 364 so far this
year. Chief Dabek has also revealed that the Krakow
police force of about 2,000 make some 6,500 arrests
a year. He maintains that an average emergency
response time, elapsing between a notification and
the arrival of policemen at the crime scene, has
been cut from 30 minutes in 2012 to 17 minutes now,
although his target is ten minutes.

Krakow Co-hosts the
World Volleyball Championships
Krakow is the co-host of the world male volleyball
championships in September 2014 alongside six other Polish
cities, namely Bydgoszcz, Gdansk, Katowice, Lodz, Sopot, and Wroclaw. Matches in Krakow take
place at a brand-new
Krakow Arena in Czyzyny neighborhood east of the
city center starting August 31st. The 2014 World Volleyball Championship in
Poland brings the top 24 national sides from
around the globe. In the course of the tournament
they will play 100 matches in total. The sport is
very popular in Poland and Polish volleyball teams,
both male and female ones, have ranked among the
best for decades.